ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE OVERVIEW
Accounts Receivable Maintenance Accounts Receivable Activity Accounts Receivable End of Month Procedure Accounts Receivable Reports Accounts Receivable History Deletion - ARHU Note: You may choose to use the Balance Forward method of Accounts Receivable, the Open Item method, or a combination of the two. The differences between Balance Forward and Open Item are:
- When a customer has a past due amount, the Balance Forward method lists the past due amount as Balance Forward, whereas the Open Item method continues to print the Invoice number, date, amount, etc. on the statement until it is paid in full.
- When a customer makes a payment on a Balance Forward account, the payment is applied to the oldest amounts due…automatically. On Open Item, upon receiving any payment at all, the bookkeeper must apply the payment to particular invoices until the payment amount is used up.
- In Balance Forward, all invoices, payments, credit memos, etc. are sent to A/R history at the end of the month. With Open Item the invoices etc., are not sent to history until the invoice, payment, etc. are completely paid off or used up.
When setting up an Open Item accounts receivable account in ARM, the “Open Item” field will need to be checked. Once an account has been flagged as either Open Item or Balance Forward, you must use the ARUL program to change them. This is due to the fact that Balance Forward amounts must be converted to “Invoices” in Open Item.
Accounts Receivable Maintenance
A. Company Profile Setup
The ARHD company profile is an Accounts Receivable record where you set up various defaults, such as the minimum dollar amount to send statements, whether or not to print credit balance statements, the yearly interest rate to charge, the discount rate, and credit limit.
B. Add Accounts
- Set up accounts in ARM. A screen will come up asking for an account number. You may enter a numerical six-digit account number, or press <Enter> and Bookstore Manager will automatically assign an account number after you have entered account information.
- Fill in the remaining fields using the ARM program for further clarification on what information you need to enter.
- After entering the account information you will be asked if you want to add this address to the mailing list. You should select "Yes."
- If manually assigning numbers for Accounts Receivable, start numbers at "000003" or above.
- An A/R account number, 100001, needs to be set up as a "dummy" account. The title of the account is A/R Batch Totals. Whenever payments on accounts are manually entered as a batch using the ARE program, the batch total needs to be rung up on the cash register. At the POS, enter the total amount of the payments, and when the register asks for an account number, use 100001. This amount will be recorded in the register, but will not be posted to the actual account number. (The individual accounts have already been posted in the ARE program.) This will post the amount received on account to the Accounts Receivable Trade General Ledger account number when sales are sent to the General Ledger.)
- If you will not be setting up new accounts "on the spot" at the register, you will need an account to charge to if a customer who has no account number set up on the system wishes to charge. Setting up account #100002 and calling it "New Accounts" can handle this situation.
Example: If a customer wishes to charge, but has no account number set up, their items are rung up and then charged to account 100002. Whenever the bookkeeper gets ready to set up the customer's actual account, an adjustment can be made in the ARE program to transfer the amount from account #100002 to the customer's new account number. If all is done properly, at the end of the month, account #100002 will always end with a zero balance. If not, then you will know that some invoice(s) were not transferred to the proper account.
C. Delete Accounts
To delete an ARM account , the account MUST have a balance of ZERO and have NO CURRENT ACTIVITY.
A. Point of Sale
The majority, if not all, of Accounts Receivable transactions are entered at the point of sale. These transactions are not posted to the accounts until the SLAR program is run. (See C. SLAR below.)
B. ARE - Accounts Receivable Entry
The ARE program is used to quickly enter a group of transactions (such as payments and adjustments). Entries made using this program are immediately reflected on the individual accounts. These entries will not go to the General Ledger unless the batch is rung up at POS or manual entry is made in the General Ledger.
Note: Payments applied to accounts using ARE need to be rung up through the Point of Sale as a batch total, using account #100001. This "dummy" account is used to enter the payments into the Sales journal and put the amount on Accounts Receivable Trade in the General Ledger. Adjusting entries will not be reflected in the General Ledger, so a General Ledger entry must be made using GLE when closing out the month on the General Ledger.
- Use the SLAR program to post invoices, credit memos, and payments entered at the POS to the Accounts Receivable accounts. This prints an audit trail.
- This program usually is run daily, either after the POS has been shut down in the evening, or in the morning before opening the POS.
Note: All Accounts Receivable transactions entered through the POS are not posted to the accounts until you run the SLAR program. Therefore, you will not want to run this program between the time you end your monthly Accounts Receivable period and the time you have completed all the end of month procedures.
Example: If your Accounts Receivable period ends on the last day of the month and you do not get all the end of month procedures completed until the fifth of the next month, you would not run this program until the evening after completion of the end of month procedures and setting up for new month.
D. ARI - ARHI - Accounts Receivable Inquiry
- ARI - Accounts Receivable Current Balance Inquiry
ARI is a program used to view the current and past history of a receivable account. This program can be executed at the POS by using the Menu Bar or by using the "Hot Key," <Ctrl Q>, and entering ARI.
- ARHI - Accounts Receivable History Inquiry
ARHI is a program that displays on the screen or prints out the history of transactions up to the last statement date. The current month’s transactions are not displayed. This program can be executed at the point of sale by using the Menu Bar or by using the "Hot Key," <Ctrl Q>, and entering ARHI.
Note: The balance shown includes the current month’s transactions, but the other totals only reflect the totals for the history not deleted and will not necessarily add up to the current balance.
Accounts Receivable End of Month Procedure
The A/R end of month procedure is as follows. These steps must all be completed in the correct order.
A. SLAR - Posting Accounts Receivable from Point of Sale
- At the end of the day that you close A/R, run the SLAR program. This will post all Accounts Receivable transactions that have not already been posted to the accounts. You may post payments using SLAR without posting invoices, but do not post to the accounts in the middle of the Closeout. You may post again after you have completed the Closeout and run ARSM to set up for new month.
- You may enter any last minute adjustments or payments using the ARE program. Enter the batch at the POS, using account # 100001. (Do this before you run the ARA program. If you have already run ARA, you will have to re-run it.)
B. ARA - Accounts Receivable Aging
- Run the ARA program using the "Monthly" option. This option ages monthly invoices, and allows service charges to be added.
- This program will produce a printout of the aging of the receivable accounts and totals the current, 30, 60, and 90-day amounts. A service charge journal is printed.
- You can re-run the ARA monthly program without doubling the service charges or aging the balance again.
C. ARIP - Accounts Receivable Invoice Print
- Run the ARIP program using the "Print Monthly Invoices" option, if you have any accounts that require a copy of all current invoices to be sent with the statement. These would be accounts that have the "Invoice Needed" field in ARM marked. ARSM deletes the file and starts a file for invoices charged the next month.
Note: You may print individual invoices for current charges for ALL customers by entering a "Y" on line 1000 in the SYS, Config File, Change Misc. Configurations.
D. ARS - Printing Statements
- Load the statement forms into the printer. The statements are printed on pre-printed forms. See enclosed examples.
- Run the ARS program to print the statements.
- All statements can be reprinted or, in the event the printer gets jammed, you can start with a particular account, as long as you have not proceeded to the next step (ARHE).
- You will be prompted to answer whether you want to run the ARHE program, but do not respond until all statements have been printed (in case you have to reprint some statements) and the statement forms have been replaced with plain paper.
- The time needed to print the statements depends upon the number of statements that need to be printed.
E. ARHE - Accounts Receivable History Extract
- After all the statements have been printed and you have changed the paper in the printer, respond "Yes" to the prompt to run the ARHE program.
- You are then asked if you want to create a backup copy of the Accounts Receivable files. Answer "Yes." The files will be copied so that you may restore them if the ARHE program does not print correctly. This file is overwritten each month. This program MUST be run and it MUST print.
- The ARHE program creates a printout that includes beginning balance, all the current month’s transactions, and the ending balance for the month.
- This program will only take a few seconds to run, but the printout time will depend upon the number of accounts that had activity.
- A summary of transactions for the month will be printed.
F. ARSM - Accounts Receivable Set Up for New Month
- After the ARHE program has been run, you will be asked if you want to run the ARSM program to set up for new month. Wait until the ARHE program has finished printing, and then choose "Yes."
- This program only takes a second to complete.
A. ARP - Masterfile Print
ARP prints a list of Accounts Receivable customers with addresses, etc., including credit information if requested.
B. ARL - Label Print
Enter ARL and select the desired options to print labels according to the mail codes set up in ARM. You may limit the labels to customers who have spent a certain dollar amount and choose current, last, and/or oldest period to include in calculation. You may also start with a certain zip code.
C. AR60 - Past Due 60+ Days
AR60 generates a report of Accounts Receivable customers who are sixty or more days past due. These may also be sorted if the customer account has been set up with a sort code.
D. ARD - Delinquent Letters
Use the ARD program to print letters to Accounts Receivable customers who are 30, 60, and/or 90 days past due. (You may edit the wording of the letters in SYStem Maintenance, 30-Day Letter, 60-Day Letter, or 90-Day Letter options.)